Sitting outside house and its stunning. Weather wonderful. At last. How did the emotional abuse blog find its way into my French romance? Will delete at some stage, or shorten as although its true, doesn't really belong here. Its the Silence of the Lambs in Disneyland which this place (this part of France) is.
The cows, pretty though they are, are going to be eaten, or milked to death. Even the little birds that land on my window ledge each morning (I now open the window as I got tired of the tapping at seven and now they just land, look, fly round the room a few times, resist the urge to poo and fly out again) are trapped and eaten by the locals.
I have had my good friends Edward, Justine and Jayne come visit. They are staying in Toulouse. Toulouse is a sexy city. Not as in Buenos A or Paris or Rome, but its got an edge to it. Its working and with it. I have been driving to collect and pick them up from the 'centre ville'.
This has been an experience. Its an hour and half drive there anyway (as long as I don't get behind tractors or caravans) . I don't usually see Toulouse at all when I arrive or drop off at the airport as its carefully sign posted, although filing up with petrol is ridiculously complicated and just done to make the lives of those who have hire cars even more stressful than they need be. There should be an Esso garage a mile outside in and out of the airport. But no, you have to go round these little roads and then its card only, but sometimes there's a person there. And that's another thing.All the petrol stations here are now card only. They don't even take cash. Not even in rural France.
So back to Toulouse and centre ville, or Toulouse Centre as they intermittently sign post it. They were staying at the Plaza Hotel, a central hotel in the 'Capitole'. Easy to find? Yes. Easy to get to? No. They have these bollard things which suddenly appear out of nowhere. Its like one of those Hunger Games where if you don't drive quick enough a road would be blocked off. So every time I dropped them off I had to find a different way to enter the maze. Then there was the sign posting. Centre Ville was there one moment and then disappeared for the next five minutes. This led me into deepest Toulouse suburbia and a very kind lady who showed me the way out. I arrived but it was stressful and when any one asks me how to get somewhere in Toulouse I will tell them to park in a car park and walk. I think that's why they do it.
I took the guys round Cordes, Najac and St Antonin yesterday. We ate at a wonderful restaurant in St Antonin over looking the river. Le Carre des Gourmets. It has a Michelin star and award winning Cassoulet,but go hungry. It is wincingly romantic overlooking the river. I walked round Cordes and there are so many pretty shops with pretty things in them. Pretty bags and dresses and necklaces. I felt like a girl again. And there's a bead shop. Eight years ago I invited a group of girls (my age but I'm calling them girls coz men call themselves 'boys' even when they're 70 odd). All very high powered, extremely bright, and I'd sorted a weekend of cultural activities as well as 'pool time'. Did they want to do that? Nope. Pool, Hello magazine, and jelly sweets and when I took them to Cordes three hours in the bead shop where they made necklaces. The bead shop disappeared the next year. Well ladies its back.
I absolutely loved that day - both with Edward et al, and the girls all those years ago. I loved showing them around Cordes, walking the narrow cobbled streets, talking about the Cathars (did you know Catholic Church called them the Church of Satan) Bless them. Of course they were nothing of the sort. Didn't believe in Church of any sort for one thing (thought it was all about money, power, creating fear and ignorance and disempowered rather than empowered). They were intellectuals, spiritualists. They were mischievous and used intellect rather than emotion to out think the Catholics. The Church said every village should have a church. They made them build one in Cordes. So they did. When the priests visited Cordes they noticed the church didn't have a door. 'You didn't say it needs a door'.
Build a door, they said.
So the Cathars built a door. Half way up the wall so no one could reach it.
The priests said build steps. So they did. In the end. Of course as a Church it had to have gargoyles but rather than have the trusty old griffin (look up at the ones in that bastion of fear and damnation, the Cathedral in Albi), they had gargoyles with priests sticking their tongues out and doing moonies and other such. I like these Cathars. Very anti establishment.
They thought we were spirits and had the 'bodies' to tempt us away from ourselves, or being our true selves. They also had some less appealing ideas but you have to read the book about them. They weren't so much anti temptation of the flesh, more identifying why it happened in the first place. In fact, the place I live La Salvatat des Carts mean salvation from the 'skin' (i.e. allegedly 'sins of the flesh'). So no sex here. But couldn't it also mean salvation from the Cathars (and have been shortened) or salvation by the Cathars? Any way, I mention this because I've had two people knock on my door this summer asking if I know where the Holy Grail is. Tempted to spread my arms wide and say 'da da, its me!' I realise the locals in Najac have been playing games again and sending earnest readers of Kate Mosse fine book Labyrinthe all over the countryside in search of the Holy Grail or some trace of where it could be. Admittedly gold coins believed to have been left by the Knights Templar were found in the chapel in the hamlet so I like to believe (and probably do knowing me) that its, whatever 'it' is in round here. They could actually have come to the right place.
Any way, I'm digressing again, because its the sort of thing you do here. The restaurant was lovely but I went into the bathroom and started to clean round the sink after washing my hands. This is when I realised that for the first time I was on holiday. I dropped the towel immediately. I wasn't laying tarpaulin (I know a lot about tarpaulin now which I think is quite sad). I wasn't painting a shutter, a railing, a door, a fountain, or cutting trees or going to Mr Bricolage rather than the pretty shop I love in Villefranche which sells expensive but wonderful table clothes and nonsense, or cleaning an oven, a shower room, or ironing. Cleaniiness is not next to Godliness (another Catholic invention probably), it is next to loosing sense of the plot. A diamond is a not a womans best friend, it is a dishwasher, whether that is a Bosch or someone else with two hands willing to get their hands dirty. Men get married to get someone to clean after them or remain on good terms with their mothers for the same reason. Women, you just get a career and a dishwasher. Use your brain to find yourself not a man. They are meant to do the chasing anyway. There is nothing 'cathartic' about cleaning. It's not even like gardening (after doing it for six weeks I still say gardening is not a pleasure just a metaphor for life). As for cleaning, we buy stuff we have to clean, then buy stuff we have to clean it with and its wasting time. Time when we could be enjoying sins of the flesh and being free spirits. And I'm talking to women here. Men know this already.
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